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Catherine Tsai

Feb. 4, 2005  |  AURORA, Colo. (AP) -- University of Colorado administrators Thursday took the first steps toward a possible dismissal of a professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi.

Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano ordered a 30-day review of Ward Churchill's speeches and writings to determine if the professor overstepped his boundaries of academic freedom and whether that should be grounds for dismissal.

Also Thursday, the Board of Regents issued an apology for Churchill's remarks at a meeting and voted to support the university's review of Churchill.

The raucous meeting drew dozens of protesters who back Churchill; at least two were arrested for disrupting the meeting and another was led away in handcuffs.

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By David Bauder

Feb. 3, 2005  |  New York -- Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday yanked a planned Super Bowl advertisement that depicts a clergyman tempted by a new pickup truck after some victims of clergy sex abuse complained it made light of their trauma.

The company wants to keep the focus on its new truck model rather than any controversy, said Sara Tatchio, spokeswoman for Ford's Lincoln division.

The ad shows a set of car keys placed on a collection plate. The clergyman finds a new Lincoln Mark LT truck in the parking lot, and lovingly caresses the exterior.

The general rules of this game are no different from any other drinking game. A drink is either a shot or a good gulp from a beer (or cider). Different events call for different numbers of drinks and all you do is watch the speech and play along. If all goes well, you'll be unconscious by the time they show the other party's response.

GAME TIME
This year, President Bush's State of the Union address is scheduled for Wednesday, February 2, 2005 at 9pm (Eastern). It should be broadcast on all major networks and cable news/political networks.
For online coverage, go to http://www.c-span.org/executive/stateoftheunion.asp.

Considering the Last Romantic, Ayn Rand, at 100

hat did Ayn Rand want?

Today is the centennial of her birth, and while newsletters and Web sites devoted to her continue to proliferate, and while little about her private life or public influence remains unplumbed, it is still easier to understand what she didn't want than what she did. Her scorn was unmistakable in her two novel-manifestos, "The Fountainhead" (1943), about a brilliant architect who stands proud against collective tastes and egalitarian sentimentality, and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957), about brilliant industrialists who stand proud against government bureaucrats and socialized mediocrity. It is still possible, more than 20 years after her death, to find readers choosing sides: those who see her as a subtle philosopher pitted against those who see her as a pulp novelist with pretensions.

She divided her world - and her characters - in similarly stark fashion into what she wanted and what she didn't want. Here is what she didn't want: Ellsworth M. Toohey, "second-handers," Wesley Mouch, looters, relativists, collectivists, altruists. Here is what she did want: Howard Roark, John Galt, individualism, selfishness, capitalism, creation.

-- Tim Grieve

Actor to Manager: I'm Working, You're Fired

n Hollywood, it is common practice for young actors to fire their managers after they have been signed to a show. This allows them to avoid paying managers a commission on their new, higher salary.

The management company Evolution Entertainment contends in a lawsuit filed last week that a former client, Kevin Connolly, who plays Eric on the HBO show "Entourage," dropped the company shortly after he found out that the show was being picked up by HBO. Evolution Entertainment is suing for breach of contract and commissions owed. Neither Evolution Entertainment nor Mr. Connolly was available for comment.

Rick Siegel, a manager and president of Marathon Entertainment, said he had felt the bite of being fired by clients like Rosa Blasi of the TV show "Strong Medicine" and Nia Vardalos, the star of the hit film, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," just as their careers took off.

Mr. Siegel contends it is just too easy for actors to get out of their contracts with managers. Much of the problem, he says, stems from a loophole in the Talent Agencies Act in California, which says that only a licensed agent can procure work for actors. An actor can cite the law to assert that a manager broke the law by getting them work, and thus quit the contract.

Nonetheless, Mr. Siegel says, "If the state says there is a way to do this, I can't blame the actor. No one would try to pay more taxes than they had to."

Marv Dauer, who has worked as a manager in Hollywood for 20 years, was fired by Jason Behr after he got a part on the show "Roswell." Although Mr. Dauer sued Mr. Behr and won his back commission, he is blunt about his feelings: "They do it for greed, I can't think of any other reason."

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Associated Press

Jan. 29, 2005  |  ROCK HILL, S.C. -- A police officer used a stun gun on a 75-year-old woman who became distraught when she could not locate a sick friend at a nursing home, according to an internal report.

Officer Hattie Jean Macon received a verbal warning and was required to attend a Taser retraining course after the investigation found she acted prematurely when she used the 50,000-volt Taser, according to the report released Thursday.

Macon was called to the nursing home after Margaret Kimbrell refused to leave. Kimbrell has said she was distraught after the staff would not disclose the location of her sick friend, and she became concerned the friend had died.

Kimbrell jerked away from the officer and swung her arm at Macon, according to a police report. The officer then fired the Taser, police said.

Kimbrell, who has claimed she did not swing her arms or threaten Macon, was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest. Her lawyer has said she will plead not guilty and may sue the department.        

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-- Geraldine Sealey

Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Culture Wars Pull Buster Into the Fray

-- Tim Grieve

KVCC hiring rule: Smokers need not apply

If you smoke and want a full-time job at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, you can forget it.

A new hiring policy that took effect on Jan. 1 tells job seekers that tobacco users will not be considered for full-time employment at KVCC.

Part-timers looking to move up a rung to a full-time position can't if they smoke or use other tobacco products.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Four employees of Okemos-based health benefits administrator Weyco Inc. have been fired for refusing to take a test that would determine whether they smoke cigarettes.

The company instituted a policy Jan. 1 that makes smoking a firing offence - even if done after business hours or at home, the Lansing State Journal reported Monday. Weyco founder Howard Weyers said previously that he instituted the tough anti-smoking rule to shield his company from high health-care costs.

Sunday January 16, 2005 9:46 PM

By ERIN GARTNER

Associated Press Writer

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) - A dentist found the source of the toothache Patrick Lawler was complaining about on the roof of his mouth: a four-inch nail the construction worker had unknowingly embedded in his skull six days earlier.

A nail gun backfired on Lawler, 23, on Jan. 6 while working in Breckenridge, a ski resort town in the central Colorado mountains. The tool sent a nail into a piece of wood nearby, but Lawler didn't realize a second nail had shot through his mouth, said his sister, Lisa Metcalse.

Egyptian paper: Israel-India nuke test caused tsunami

The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, "was possibly" caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which "Israeli and American nuclear experts participated," an Egyptian weekly magazine reported Thursday.

According to Al-Osboa', India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has lately received sophisticated nuclear know-how from the United States and Israel, both of which "showed readiness to cooperate with India in experiments to exterminate humankind."

Since 1992, the magazine argued, leading geological centers in Britain, Turkey and other countries, warned of the need "not to hold nuclear experiments in the region of the Indian Ocean known as 'the Fire Belt,' in which the epicenter of the earthquake lies.

Geologists labeled that region 'The Fire Belt' for being "a dangerous terrain that can move at anytime, without human intervention," Al-Osboa' wrote.

While they pursue Beltran, the Mets may want to revisit a transaction they attempted earlier in the off-season, Mike Piazza to Los Angeles for Shawn Green.

The Dodgers wanted to trade Green to Arizona and save $8 million of his $16 million salary this season; they would have given the Diamondbacks $8 million to offset the salary. But Green and the Diamondbacks failed by the deadline yesterday to agree on a contract extension that would have led Green to waive the no-trade clause in his contract.

The Mets would still like to have Green to play first base or right field, but their earlier talks with the Dodgers ended when Green let it be known that he would not approve a trade because he did not want to play in New York.

But now that the Dodgers have tried unsuccessfully to trade him twice in the space of a few weeks - and even though their general manager said yesterday that he expected Green to be with the team on opening day - Green might get the idea that they don't want him around and opt for the immense popularity that a Jewish player, a good Jewish player at that, would enjoy in New York. He would just have to know that he wouldn't have to attend all the bar mitzvahs he would be invited to.

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